Gladstone Engineering Alliance Inc. (GEA) is throwing their support to help those small to medium businesses recruit and retain staff. GEA will invest over $100,000 into helping build business capacity in the human resource field in times of high skills demands in the Gladstone region.

“The GEA has been aware of the issues, small to medium businesses in the Gladstone region are facing to attract and retain skilled labour, and believes the program GEA has designed to help address these issues will not only benefit other Gladstone businesses in the service section towards helping the problem, but provide support and solutions that can be implemented into the current workplaces,” GEA General Manager Carli Hobbs said.

“But while the GEA is committed to making a difference, and providing support to SME’s we need their help to know exactly what they need help with, and ask those who are facing these issues to attend one of the two initial seminars GEA will run, to gather information.”

GEA is working with Skills Queensland & Amarna and will host two FREE seminars held on

Day

Tuesday February, 28 from 9am – 12 noon

Night

Wednesday evening, February 29 from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

 SME’s are encouraged to attend either seminar to learn how to improve the workplace for the employer and employees needs and to inform GEA what other issues they are facing, and what other workshops are available.

“Our aim is to provide a strategy to enable realistic, long term and sustainable employment for the local community, if we know what our community needs, then we can tailor our workshops and HR interventions around delivering those needs.

The GEA will also be offering 50 companies within the Gladstone Region, who have inadequate internal human resource capabilities or could do with some help in managing their workforces, the opportunity to have a HR Consultant into their workplace for one day to assess their human resource capabilities such as policies and procedures and have a program developed for the acquisition of appropriate skills.

To Register Click Here 

The seminars are part of the Gladstone Engineering Alliance’s Skills Queensland Strategic Investment Fund initiative

A site supervisor has spoken out to the WINO amid on-site rumours 250 contract jobs will go.

He did not want to be identified.

Coal production in the Bowen Basin is expected to be significantly cut when more than 3000 workers walk off the job today at seven BMA (BHP Mitsubishi Alliance) mines.

The week-long strike is the latest industrial action in a dispute that has been raging between unions and BMA for more than 15 months as they try to broker a new enterprise agreement.

The projects, near Wandoan and Taroom respectively, are expected to cost about $1.8 billion to build and export up to 14 million tonnes of coal annually for 25 years.

The north Surat Basin projects are jointly owned by Cockatoo Coal Limited (51%) and MCH Surat Basin Investment, a subsidiary of Mitsui Coal Holdings (49%).

Last week, permanent residents were given notice to vacate the town’s only caravan park by August, but there is no where to go, says Isaac Regional Council’s mayor, Cedric Marshall.

“It will affect a number of businesses as they have several employees staying at the caravan park,” he said. “If businesses close, that will be a loss of service industry.”

The Boalywood Shoe Shop, touted as the best little shoe house in the west, is holding its final sale tomorrow as own Ruth Boaly closes the doors due to ill health.

“It’s just that I couldn’t afford to rent it out,” she told the WINO.

The worker was inside a bunded sulphuric acid storage area, when he stepped on a grid mesh covering a sulphuric acid drain.

The grid gave way, and the man’s foot was submerged above the boot line.

Yesterday, the Queensland Mines and Quarries Safety Performance and Health Report 2010-11 was released by the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI).

However, they are more or less the same statistics released four months ago when the Commissioner for Mine Safety published his own report into the performance of the Queensland Mines Inspectorate.

Figures released by recruitment firm Hays showed skilled employees in the oil and gas sector had experienced on average pay rises of 6.1 per cent in the past year.

This is set to continue as employers shrug off gloom surrounding the global economy and push ahead with key projects.

This week Lord Mayor Graham Quirk unveiled the city’s plans for business development over the next two decades and a key part of projected growth was FIFO services.

An estimated 177 resource industry companies already have their main office in Brisbane and the city council says for every mining job in the State there are 19 indirect jobs created. This in itself shows the potential for growth.